Who's Hiring The Most, Holiday Season 2016

In many ways the holiday season means more of everything: more spending, more time with family and more traffic on the roads, just to start with. It also means more jobs, especially retail jobs. This year U.S. retailers expect to hire nearly 740,000 seasonal workers, according to a survey by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Careers website Indeed searched its job-listings database to find the organizations doing the most seasonal hiring. The list is not exhaustive, since some companies have already filled their seasonal openings, while others don’t yet know how many they’ll hire. Indeed’s list underestimates the aggregate numbers of job openings because firms can place one job ad for a position that has multiple slots available. But this data is timely and provides a useful comparison across companies.

To view the top 10, open the gallery. For the complete list, see the end of this post.

Macy’s took the top spot among companies making seasonal hires. The retailer currently seeks to fill positions like merchandise handler, a job that involves moving floor displays and tracking inventory.

JCPenney came in second. It’s looking to fill positions like cash counting associate, which requires providing customer service, making price-tag changes and restocking merchandise. Caleres, a large company that owns more than 1,000 Famous Footwear stores and shoe brands like Dr. Scholl’s and Vince, came in sixth on the list. Many of its seasonal openings are for sales associates.

Wages for these temporary roles tend to be low. Sample salary information from Indeed shows a Macy’s seasonal associate earning $9.20 per hour and a Caleres associate making $11.00 per hour. Some retail positions pay commission—for example, sales jobs in shoe and jewelry departments often offer this extra incentive.

Although they didn’t make Indeed’s list, other organizations plan to hire tens of thousands of seasonal workers. The U.S. Postal Service plans to bring on almost 40,000. Fedex intends to hire 50,000, while UPS will recruit 95,000. Amazon expects to hire a whopping 120,000 people, an increase of 20,000 from its 2015 seasonal hiring.

Job seekers should note that some seasonal slots become permanent roles. In 2015 Amazon said that more than 14,000 of its temporary positions became permanent after the holidays, and this year it expects that number to increase.